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In his Allegory of the Cave, Greek philosopher Plato described prisoners who have spent their entire lives chained to the wall of a dark cavern. Behind the prisoners lies a flame, and between the flame and prisoners parade objects that cast shadows onto a wall in the prisoners’ field of view. These two-dimensional shadows are the only things that the prisoners have ever seen—their only reality. Their shackles have prevented them from perceiving the true world, a realm with one additional dimension to the world that they know, a dimension rich with complexity and—unbeknownst to the prisoners—capable of explaining all that they see....

Dear EarthTalk: Backyard fire pits have become the latest must-have gardening feature. How bad are they on the environment? – Michael O’Laughlin, Tigard, OR With Fall setting in and the mercury starting to drop, many of us want to extend our time outdoors, and sitting around a backyard fire pit has become one of the most popular means to do so. But even though it may be fun—s’mores anyone?—it is not good for the environment, especially during times when air quality is already poor....

The ancient Greeks believed atoms were the smallest bits of matter in the universe. Then scientists in the 20th century split the atom, yielding tinier ingredients: protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons, in turn, were shown to consist of smaller particles called quarks, bound together by “sticky” particles, the appropriately named gluons. These particles, we now know, are truly fundamental, but even this picture turns out to be incomplete. Experimental methods for peering inside protons and neutrons reveal a full-fledged symphonic orchestra within....

It’s a classic cocktail party conundrum: How do our brains decide where we should train our attention when people are milling all about us chatting away—some to us, some to others? In an attempt to find out, researchers at Stanford University and McGill University in Montreal scanned the brains of 18 subjects who were listening to classical music by 18th-century British composer William Boyce. “You have to kind of segment these streams [of information] into chunks,” says senior study author Vinod Menon, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford....

The failure of the CDC to produce reliable COVID testing kits in a timely fashion, the slow and ineffective rollout of the COVID vaccine, and the Russian cyberattack on government agencies (in spite of multiple GAO reports warning of the risks of just such an attack). All of these seemingly unrelated events reflect the central failure of federal, science-focused agencies to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Just as the attacks of 9/11 revealed the organizational weakness of scattering multiple intelligence agencies across the federal government (and resulted in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security), so too must recent events, indicative of lagging U....

MIRSKY: Why do you call the book “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”? FRIEDMAN: What we’re seeing in the world today is the convergence of three big, seismic events. The first is obviously global warming. Second is what I call global flattening, which is my shorthand for the rise of middle classes all across the world in bigger numbers than ever before, from China to Brazil to India to Russia. Those middle classes increasingly have the energy and consumption patterns, demands and aspirations of Americans....

Psychedelics are psychoactive substances that historically have attracted exaggerations of benefits as well as alarmism. As with most subjects that bring out extreme views, the scientific data provide a more grounded perspective. Sometimes, the scientific data require further clarification. We are responding to a thought-provoking opinion piece by Eddie Jacobs published on October 11, 2020 entitled “What if a Pill Can Change Your Politics or Religious Beliefs? Some could mistakenly take away from the piece an unrealistic impression that is not supported by the scientific data....

One of the major-party presidential candidates has had plenty to say during this year’s campaign. But almost none of the words from Donald J. Trump have been about the importance of science and science literacy to the nation’s economic growth, security and international prestige—as well as to the health and well-being of the American people and the future of the planet itself. Trump has, however, made statements about science over the years, many of them in the form of tweets....

Editor’s Note (4/30/19): This article was originally published on February 15, 2019. It is being republished today amid the escalating political crisis in Venezuela. Empty labs, nonexistent funding, deteriorating equipment and an unsympathetic government: Many Venezuelan scientists say the country’s worsening political turmoil has made research virtually impossible. In the capital, Caracas, they struggle to find food and maintain personal security—their experiments a distant afterthought. Abroad, self-exiled biochemists and physicists clean houses, wash tables and give private language lessons to make ends meet....

“Actually, a homeless guy saw me and helped me to the school,” Fairley said. “[People at the school] had me lie down for a bit.” Fairley felt better after a rest, but the school administrators insisted he go to the hospital. On the way there, he had a heart attack. Years earlier, as a newcomer to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Fairley had been asked to vet new research that correlated exposure to particulate matter and increased mortality rates—particularly deaths related to cardiovascular and respiratory incidents....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative to speed the develop of cancer treatments has made some important strides such as increased information sharing among researchers but still faces challenges in many areas, according to a report out Monday. The White House is still seeking about $700 million from Congress for the project. With Democratic President Barack Obama leaving office in January, it is also unclear how much of the initiative will continue under a new administration....

In the May 2011 issue of Scientific American mathematician John Baez co-authors “The Strangest Numbers in String Theory,” an article about the octonions, an eight-dimensional number system that was discovered in the mid–19th century but that has been largely ignored until quite recently. As the name of the article implies, interest in the octonions has been rekindled by their surprising relationship to recent developments in theoretical physics, including supersymmetry, string theory and M-theory....

In 2008, for the first time, U.S. women earned more doctorates in biology than men did. But advanced degrees in other core disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) remain stubbornly gender-imbalanced. In chemistry, for instance, women now garner 49 percent of bachelor’s degrees but only 39 percent of Ph.D.s. What dissuades so many from further study? Possible explanations include gender bias, the prospect of short-term postdoctoral jobs that complicate child rearing, and a lack of role models....

Australia’s southern and eastern agricultural regions are deep in the thick of a months-long plague of mice that has destroyed crops and overwhelmed farmers. The infestation comes after years of drought, devastating wildfires and a period of heavy rain that boosted plant growth, creating ideal conditions for the hungry rodents to reproduce exponentially. Now farms and fields are overrun with swarms of mice that have taken up residence in the walls of barns and homes....

Common wisdom holds that negative first impressions are hard to shake—and some research backs this up. But such studies often unfairly compare impressions based on immoral deeds that are extreme and relatively rare (such as selling drugs to kids) with impressions based on kindnesses that are more common (such as sharing an umbrella). A new set of studies involving precisely balanced behaviors finds that people are more willing to change their mind about individuals who initially come off as selfish than about those they deem selfless....

It has been 20 years since Bill and Melinda Gates first started using their fortune to address global health issues. By focusing on the diseases that hit the poorest parts of the world the hardest, their foundation has since saved countless lives and prevented untold suffering. “My enthusiasm and belief that this is the right way for this money to be spent is as strong as it was then,” Bill Gates said in a telephone interview with Scientific American before attending a major international health meeting this week in Geneva....

Nobody wants to spend hours picking through a steady stream of garbage; this is why many recycling operations rely on automated systems to separate plastic containers, glass bottles, aluminum cans and mixed paper. But these systems have an imperfect track record, so human workers must stand by to nab what the machines fail to catch. Waste Management, a trash-hauling corporate titan with 100 recycling facilities in North America, employs about 3,000 human sorters—but it has difficulty finding workers willing to show up every day, and many quit within hours....

On the morning of August 12, 2013, nearly eight months after 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and killed 26 people, Michael Mudry, an investigator with the Connecticut State Police, drove to nearby Danbury to try to solve a little mystery. Police had found a Garmin GPS unit in Lanza’s house, and its records showed that the gunman had driven to the same spot nine times in April, May and June 2012, arriving around midnight each time and staying for hours....

Research has shown that lead kills neurons (nerve cells), resulting in smaller brains. It has long been hypothesized that such changes in the brain caused by childhood lead exposure may be behind a higher incidence of poor cognitive performance and criminal behavior. And although it is difficult to disentangle the confounding effects of race, class and economics, a recent study by Kim Dietrich, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati, found that individuals who suffered from the highest lead exposure as children had the smallest brain sizes—as well as the most arrests....

Long before our ancestors evolved large brains and language, even before they tamed fire or made stone tools, they started doing something no mammal had done before: walking on two legs. Skeletal adaptations for traveling upright are evident in fossils of the very oldest hominins—members of the human family—which date to between seven million and five million years ago. Moving on two legs rather than four set the stage for subsequent evolutionary changes in our lineage....